Rental electric scooters, which were banned from San Francisco in June after complaints, returned to city streets Monday.

First-day anecdotes indicate the companies still have work to do when it comes to getting riders to respect the rules and others to respect the transportation mode.

During morning rush hour, a team from local startup Scoot handed out free helmets and answered questions from curious riders near Embarcadero Station.

But Jasmine Wallsmith, a senior marketing and events manager at Scoot, cringed as she watched one rider peel away on the sidewalk. She shouted at him, nicely, to find a bike lane, and he quickly moved into the street. He enthusiastically pumped his fist in the air.

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On the corner of Mission and First streets, Salvadore Reynoso stood outside his florist shop and took a photo of nine Scoot scooters toppled over in front of him. Reynoso said that around 8 a.m., a man knocked over the scooters one by one and continued walking.

The scooters appeared to be parked illegally at a bus stop, which Reynoso said blocked some passengers from exiting the buses through the back doors. It’s against city rules to park a scooter in loading zones or areas marked by a yellow or white curb.

“Why would you do something like that?” said Reynoso, who described the man as angry but couldn’t tell if he was unwell.

Wear helmets until a new law allowing adults to ride helmet-free is enacted Jan. 1.

Source: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

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After scooters hit city streets in March, plenty of residents raged against the electric vehicles for routinely blocking sidewalks and building entrances, causing people to trip and making sidewalks less accessible for people with mobility issues. People also whizzed illegally down the sidewalks.

The city attorney’s office heard the complaints, and it eventually slapped three high-profile scooter startups that had planned two-wheelers here — Bird, Lime, and Spin — with cease-and-desist orders.

Bird, Lime and Spin remain banned. Instead, two local companies, Scoot and Skip, have received permits to operate as part of a year-long pilot program. They must show they can retrain residents to be better, safer riders.

Ryan Zalucky, a real estate agent, sped onto a Market Street sidewalk to park a Skip scooter after coming from Mission Bay. Before they were banned, Lime scooters were his preferred method of getting to and from property showings, because they were often more affordable and faster than Uber or Lyft. He said he was relieved to have scooters back.

“I was bummed, but I obviously understood,” Zalucky said of the scooter ban. “People were getting pretty aggressive with them. I saw a video of someone playing ‘Lime Bowling,’ where they basically had like 10 Limes and then another one that they kind of plowed into them.”

Skip and Scoot have said they will share information with the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency on locals’ riding habits — including where, when and how far — while at the same time guarding riders’ privacy and making sure that disadvantaged communities have access to scooters. They also have the challenging task of ensuring that riders comply with rules — such as no sidewalk riding, and proper parking (near the curb or in bike racks or other specified areas).

Paul Rose, the agency's chief spokesman, said, “We support the spirit of innovation that scooter companies bring and will be holding them to high standards” over the next 12 months.

Skip and Scoot employees unloaded scooters from vans in the early hours of Monday in the Financial District, South of Market, the Castro, Dogpatch, the Bayview and the Mission; Skip also dropped some off in Golden Gate Park and the Excelsior. Each company is allowed to have 625 scooters in San Francisco for now, but the MTA might let them double their numbers in six months.

Users can book them through the companies’ apps, paying $1 to unlock them and 15 cents a minute to zip around on them.

People can report illegally parked scooters or riders behaving badly by emailing or tweeting at Scoot, according to Wallsmith.

“The GPS in our scooters lets us know where every scooter is, all the time,” Wallsmith said.

Skip’s mobile app lets passersby notify the company of a poorly parked scooter. The goal is for a “Skip Scout,” a gig worker who’s out around town policing parking and riding behavior, to find and move the scooter. Some people also tweet at Skip.

Notice anything different on your commute to work this morning, SF? We've finally deployed our scooters and they're ready to go for a ride. Just download our app and find your Skip You can read more about our hometown launch below. https://t.co/qRXsfMFQM2#skipthetraffic

Melia Russell is a business reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, where she covers tech culture and labor issues in Silicon Valley. Prior to joining The Chronicle, she started as an intern at Business Insider in 2013 and spent five years at the digital news site. Melia has degrees in magazine journalism and information management and technology from Syracuse University.